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I find Slave's vocal performance to be among Manson's best since ... well, a long fucking time. He plays to his weaknesses here, knowing he sounds trashed and fucked up, letting it result in something leathery, nasty and rough. The lyrics blend his typical esoteric and religion-focused obsessions with his general personal, conversational style post-EMDM. The music is pure Antichrist Superstar, the vocal filtering on the "You are ... what you beat, yaaaaaaaaaah" makes him sound like a demented preacher at that shock symbol pulpit; the bass is purely fucking thumping, the drums smash, the sampling from the beginning to the end is some serious Potrait of an American Family shit at work, his "Like a winter in Hades, we drooled for the ladies, as if the apples were owned by God" line is excellent, classic Manson-style writing to my ears ... I don't know, the whole thing is what I've wanted out of this guy for ages. If we got a whole album in that throaty, messy, consistently-intense style with music that makes up for his messy delivery by being reliable and momentous, I'd be a huge, huge fan of it.

Also, those "Ah-ah-oh, ah-ah-ah" vocals muffled beneath the mix at 4 minutes in is just fantastic. I feel like the whole song is a mixing peak in terms of his recent material. It's one of the primary reasons I think The Pale Emperor is a kickass record -- it's just vintage Marilyn Manson for me. Maybe it doesn't tread enough new ground, but with his track record, I'd rather he do the same trick well than fail a new one miserably. A

I've been a person ranting for years now (I can't believe that; Jesus fucking Christ what am I doing with my life) that Manson should either go all-out electro or just dive deep into his flirtations with that Southern, filthy, corrupted Baptist, swamp water style. TPE is that sound. Bluesy, grimy, dirty, basking in it -- it's like a gleeful phantom running around, resenting the town it's from while finding a twisted sense of identity in it. It's everything he did on "I Put a Spell On You" all those ages ago taken to the max and expanded to an entire album-length. Slave ... feels like a key example of that commitment to everything he's dicked around with before. I love it. I"m really, really surprised how much that album still holds up for me.

I've probably said it before; I'd be completely on board with a completely stripped down acoustic Manson tour. No excuses to run around the stage and thus run out of breath within five minutes; just simplicity and a relaxed performance with good vocals. A lot of his songs lend themselves very, very well to an acoustic setting and have good versions in that vein to prove it; specifically thinking of Four Rusted Horses and Speed of Pain here. I think they could hit it out of the park.

Originally Posted by SM Rollinger

Some of my favorite earlier tracks that dont seem to get much of love...

edit: Oh and add Target Audience/President Dead to that list too. i really liked those back in the day

Huge fan of Mr. Superstar here. Back in high school, a friend and I would sing it on break at the top of our lungs during lunch and scare people away, heh

And Diary Of A Dope Fiend is a top-5 Manson track for me; I can barely listen to Dope Hat anymore because of it.

Somehow, they nailed the feeling of what it is to have a very, very bad mushroom trip in auditory form. As soon as the mumbling stops and the creaking guitars come in...guess what? You're high and not going to good places. The echoey drums, the alternately reserved, slurred and screamed vocals, the screechy guitar solo, the constant ominous bass line....it's impossible for me to not picture Manson as he appears on the SLC album cover in full drug-peddler regalia every time I hear it. It's perfect.

Bad MM songs ? There is only 4song in his whole catalogue that i can't stand listening too is
-Wormboy :It kills the flow the album for me ,i remember when i was listening to the whole album ,i would skip really fast when deformography would finish just to make sure i didnt the first note to that waful song
-Arma-wathever-gedon :My god this songs sucks ,nothing is good about it specially the video
-unkillable monster :makes me want to puke in my mouth a little ,weak and dumb lyrics
-Heart shaped glasses :those have got to be the most stupidest lyrics he ever wrote ,the video is not bad thought

I don't want to de-rail the current discussion. I just have a few more observations and opinions about Antichrist Superstar as for some reason I've just "gotten it" after all these years (I tried listening to it once back when it came out and didn't understand why people liked it. Then I bought the album in 2005 and only skipped through tracks to find "keepers" and then never listened to it again after skipping through just once.).

So, here's how I see it. Antichrist Superstar is like a sister to The Downward Spiral. It's kind of like The Downward Spiral 2.0 or an off-shoot story of another character from that universe.

An intuition I've had today is that Reznor got fucked by Manson. Manson got him deep into the drugs around Antichrist Superstar's time of production. Afterwards, Reznor was too deep into substance abuse to create much of anything and that's why we waited until 1999 for TDS's follow-up... In a way, Manson wanted to eliminate Reznor as a competitor, and I think Reznor couldn't see that at the time... Manson's a fuck... almost destroyed Trent. (under this theory)

I keep listening to this album again and again. Damn it's good. I love the chorus to Little Horn. It's so heavy and propulsive and warped like gravity is being ripped apart (something like that).

I've probably said it before; I'd be completely on board with a completely stripped down acoustic Manson tour. No excuses to run around the stage and thus run out of breath within five minutes; just simplicity and a relaxed performance with good vocals. A lot of his songs lend themselves very, very well to an acoustic setting and have good versions in that vein to prove it; specifically thinking of Four Rusted Horses and Speed of Pain here. I think they could hit it out of the park.

Agreeded, In The Valley of The Shadow of Death and Lamb of God would be shoe-ins for a tour like that too. You could probably get a sweet acoustic interpretation out of A Place In The Dirt too.

Anyways, with all this ACSS talk, I realized it had been awhile since I listened to the demo version of the album. So I busted out my "alternate reality where Daisy stayed in the band edit", and gave it a spin. I re-sequenced the thing as follows...

01 Heaven on the Brain (wasnt on the tape, taken from Daisy's soundcloud)
02 Irresponsible Hate Anthem
03 The Beautiful People
04 D is for Dirty
05 Tourniquet (hopefully someday the full demo version of this will see the light of day)
06 Piss In The Wound
07 Little Black Spots
08 P is for Porno
09 Wormboy Gets His Wings
10 Mr. Superstar
11 Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes
12 Angel with the Scabbed Wings
13 Smells Like Children
14 Antichrist Superstar
15 196
16 The Minute of Decay
17 Suicide Snowman
18 Man That You Fear (alt version)

Hopefully its ok to talk about this now, its been a few years since this came out, and I remember Pogo throwing a fit about it at the time because of Little Black Spots. Anyways, I have always felt like this version is more of a sequel to Portrait, in terms of feel and atmosphere. You can really tell that when Daisy left, they gutted alot of his contributions to what would have been the album, and brought in the NIN guys to help fill the void (giving us the album we know and love today.) You can see that neither Little Horn nor Reflecting God is here, and I feel like they were created to replace the 2 Spooky Kids tracks on here (Piss In The Wound and Suicide Snowman).

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

According to his twitter, the chemotherapy Scott (Daisy)'s been going through has rendered his fingers too numb to play anymore and he's selling off his guitars.

Total bummer Hopefully somebody here can get their hands on one that some some Spooky Kids stage time.

I know people here like Leviathant and others dislike Manson, but fuck that: this album SLAYS.

Mephistopheles of Los Angeles, Seven Day Binge, Birds of Hell Waiting...this album is almost like a spiritual successor to Mechanical Animals.

You can make a case against EMDM; that's his low point, no doubt. But Golden Age, Born Villain, HEOL and this one...you just don't "get" Manson if you can't get behind these albums for the quality they give up..

Manson's great to listen to when you are all NIN'd out, but something I can only listen to once in a while, kind of like Rammstein - listen to it too much and you get sick of their sound pretty fast. Looking forward to the next MM album.

I'm going to make a possibly bold statement: Antichrist Superstar is equal to or greater than The Downward Spiral.

Here's why:

Antichrist Superstar is more fun: the songs make you feel like breaking the rules, doing drugs, hanging out with your friends and fornicating. TDS can sometimes just amplify your negative emotions and draw you inwards. Antichrist Superstar's lyrical content is more varied, well-written and humorous.

I just can't stop listening to it. If Reznor is the Prince of Darkness, Manson is the Clown Prince of Darkness. I like the twisted, rock star world Manson portrays on this album.

If you compare the albums, Antichrist Superstar is more of a rock album. I like that it blends more straight-forward rock numbers with the Nine Inch Nails style of other songs, and adds in a mix of supernatural mad house cryptic circus.

So, I've never listened to a Manson album from start to finish, and decided to check out The Pale Emperor after hearing "Killing Strangers" briefly in John Wick (I'd heard some singles and stuff, but that's it), and gah-daaaamn. I like this album a bunch. Definitely gonna be working my way back through the catalog.

Been spinning a bit of THEOL this past week. I'm remembering how the first time I heard "I'll swallow up all of you like a big bottle of big big pills", I started to realize something was very, very wrong and that EMDM wasn't just (In my view, anyway) a one-and-done off moment. You can hear the lyrical quality drop like a stone between GOAG to that album.

For years I was convinced it was alcoholism at work, but when he came out and admitted he lost some of his fire and drive...yeah. Damn shame. I never get tired of his overall sound, but I think we'd be able to tell if he started feeling inspired again.

TPE was great, but I have to admit that it did still seem like he was holding back a bit.

Anyway, both Tyler Bates and Twiggy are backing him on the next one so that'll be a first. I'm very interested in hearing how that pans out.

You can make a case against EMDM; that's his low point, no doubt. But Golden Age, Born Villain, HEOL and this one...you just don't "get" Manson if you can't get behind these albums for the quality they give up..

I think that's crap. Eat Me, Drink Me is one of Manson's best albums. The High End of Low, Born Villain and to a much lesser extent The Golden Age of Grotesque are Manson's low points. But in no universe is EMDM worse in any way than THEOL and BV. smh

See, I don't think so. Listen to ACSS demo tape, I think it was recorded before TR got involved (although it's just a wild guess) and most of the songs are already 80% finished versions, as far as writing and arrangements go. Coincidentally, Reznor is credited as co-writer on two songs that aren't on the tape at all (Little Horn and The Reflecting God) and one song that differs the most from the finished version (P is for Porno/Deformography).